CURFEW CALLED OFF IN SRI LANKA

Special to the New York Times

Published: April 27, 1987

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, April 26—
The Government today lifted completely the curfew imposed on Tuesday after the bombing at the central bus station here.

Though the streets were heavily patrolled by police with automatic weapons and there was much apprehension that the spate of terrorist attacks might not be over, people will now be allowed to move freely day and night.

This morning, a solemn crowd came to the bus station to stare silently at a roped-off area of destruction still being studied by explosives experts. While the city retains a superficial calm, rumors and fears are circulating about the events that have befallen the country in the last 10 days, leaving more than 300 people dead, most of them civilians.

The bus-station attack and the earlier killing of bus passengers in the countryside have been blamed on ethnic Tamil separatists. Some officials said they expected more bombings.

Air strikes against Tamil guerrilla positions were reported to have tapered off this morning in the Jaffna peninsula, the center of the four-year war for an independent homeland for ethnic Tamils. The Government said it had widened the area of its attacks to include most of the north.

In the Eastern Province, the Government said that its forces had inflicted heavy casualties and damage. This included the destruction on Saturday of what officials described as the major base of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the strongest rebel army.